A Potpourri of Vestiges Feature
Roy Peter Clark teaches everyone to write. He speaks
at conferences around the world and is one of the most influential media
consultants. Here are 10 tips from his book 50 Essential Strategies for Every
Writer.
Follow the word order
Begin the sentence with the subject and the predicate,
putting the additional sentence members after. Even a long sentence can be
simple and clearwhen the subject and the predicate make its content understandable.
That was one of such sentence. The subject and the predicate are on the left, while
all the rest is on the right. The clarity and strength of narration grow from
the sentence to the sentence in the paragraph.
Use strong verbs
Use simple forms of present or past tense. Never use a passive voice if you can use an active one. You can find an example of this recommendation on the essay forever service.
The active form of the verb is easier to perceive than
the passive one. In addition, it more expressively communicates the actions
that take place.
Point as a stop signal
Put strong words at the beginning and end of sentences
and paragraphs.
The comma in the sentence is a speed bump slowing down
the reading speed, while the dot is a stop sign. At the point, the thought
expressed in the sentence ends. A short pause in the stream of reading
accentuates the last word. Any word after the point is attracting attention to
itself. This effect is amplified at the end of the paragraph when the last
words border with white space.
Read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Dr. King’s I Have
a Dream to study the oratorical techniques for constructing a phrase.
Be careful with adverbs
Be careful in the use of adverbs, they can duplicate
the meaning of words and signs. For example, look at this excerpt from Tom
Swift and His Great Searchlight (1912):
“Look! – Ned suddenly cried out, - There’s a man! I’m
going to talk to him! – Nedhotly declared.”
The exclamation mark after “Look” might have been
enough to whet the curiosity of the young reader.
Look for original images
Look for original images, make lists of synonyms, and free
associations – marvel at the capabilities of the language. Reject the clichés
and creative ideas of the first level. When you are seduced by a banal phrase such
as“white as snow,” stop writing. Do what the proponents of natural procreation
call a “cleansing breath.” Then write the phrase on a piece of paper. Start to
think up the options:
- White as snow
- Whiter than the Snow White
- Snow white
- Gray as snow in the city
- White as Prince Charles
Working with voice
The style of narration, the use of metaphors, slang,
or scientific reasoning are all receptions, which a conversation with the
reader is built on.They reflect the voice of the author. The most effective way
to check a written voice is reading aloud. Read your material aloud to hear if
it sounds like you, whether all parts of the text are consistent among
themselves and are sustained in one intonation.
The author can read aloud to himself or the editor.
The editor can read aloud to the author or another editor.
Name the big parts
It is easier to grasp the structure of an article if
you can identify the main parts.
All good articles are divided into parts:
- The introduction
- The main part
- The conclusion
Even the author, on whose canvas you cannot see the
seams, can point us at the unseen stitches. The author knows the big parts of
the article, and he can name them for the reader, using subtitles. The reader
who sees that the whole text is broken into parts will better remember the
whole article.
Cut
Accurate and sharp texts are born from a skillful
reduction. When you overcome the writer’s stupor, it is very easy to fall in
love with one’s own words. This is a pleasant feeling, but it can lead to bad
consequences. If you fall in love with your quotes, characters, stories, and metaphors,
it seems impossible to delete one of them. But you must do that.
If your goal is to achieve brevity and accuracy, start
by deleting large parts of the text. Smaller parts can be removed later.
Cut out any paragraph that does not support the
central idea of the article. Cut out weak quotes, examples or scenes to give
way to strong ones.
Cut any paragraph you created to fool the editor.Do
not force the editor to cut the text. You know the material better. Mark the
places for possible edits. Maybe they should be removed now?
Here are the other things you need to remove:
- Adverbs, which puff up emotions, but do not change the meaning – such as only, entirely, especially, completely, and accurately.
- Constructions with a pretext that repeat what was said before: in this article, in this story, in this film, in this city (it is clear that a person is reading this article, there is no need to specify).
- Phrases that grow on verbs such as it seems that; it looks like that; should; I would like to.
- Abstract nouns based on active verbs like consideration instead of considering, judgment instead of judging, observation instead of observing.
Collect as much information as possible
Collect information – it can be useful for large
projects in the future. To collect raw material for a large project, keep the
scraps that others throw away.
When writers tell how they worked on large projects,
they often use one of two metaphors to describe the method of work. The first
one is composting. To grow a good harvest, you must first fertilize the land.
To do this, many gardeners are doing a compost pile of organic wastein their
garden, which collects useless remnants, such as banana peels.
The second metaphor is every little bit helps. Collecting
every little detail, in the end, you are going to have a small ball that rolls
into the bigger ball, and one day becomes of a very large size.
Write the final part
Any story has an end, even a template one. The prince
and the princess lived happily until death. The cowboy rode off into the
sunset. The witch is dead. The end.
For journalists, the end is a problem. The old genres of information resist sharp endings. News materials, written on the principle of an inverted pyramid, go from the most important information to less significant. In this case, the reader himself decides where the end of the material is when he stops reading. The busy editor is cutting from the end, without fear of removing something important.
For journalists, the end is a problem. The old genres of information resist sharp endings. News materials, written on the principle of an inverted pyramid, go from the most important information to less significant. In this case, the reader himself decides where the end of the material is when he stops reading. The busy editor is cutting from the end, without fear of removing something important.
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